Congrats to Kannen the winner of our LBP2 Maphook contest! Kannen wins the game of their choice for this lovely entry! Curious to see all the awesome entries? Check them out in this Maphook story

How to enter the MapHook Contest!
Our good friends at MapHook have partnered with us yet again to give you an opportunity to win a game (any game, any system, up to $60!)! We would like you to go to either MapHook.com or download the app to your iphone/ipod and create a Hook using the category Video Gaming & tell us about your idea for a great MMO!. You have until March 19th, 2011 to get your entry in and the winner will be chosen at random and win a game of their choosing (up to $60 value)! Please be sure to have the word MMO or LoL in the title so the entry can be found. Good luck!!

Show Notes coming soon

Bargain Buys!

Gaming News

WoW

Be a Part of the Show!

Give us a call on our voicemail line at 623-252-4263 or email us a mp3!

Thanks to everyone that created an entry in last episodes contest. We got a lot of really creative entries that you can view here and congrats to Kreitz for his winning entry LOL DCUO: SnowPac rises .

How to enter the MapHook Contest!
Our good friends at MapHook have partnered with us again to create a fun contest. We would like you to go to either MapHook.com or download the app to your iphone/ipod and create a Hook using the category Video Gaming & tell us about your idea for a great Little Big Planet 2 costume, custom level or minigame. You have until March 5th, 2011 to get your entry in and the winner will be chosen at random and win a game of their choosing (up to $60 value)! Please be sure to have the word LBP2 or LoL in the title so the entry can be found. Good luck!!

A new Smithsonian Exhibit called The Art of Video Games will explore 40 years of video games. The exhibit will be located on 3rd floor North, American Art Museum between March 16, 2012 – September 30, 2012. To vote on the video games go to http://www.artofvideogames.org/

DC Universe Online: Nicole/Kim/Stephanie – All say Buy It, but with a huge caveat. Don’t expect too much with community especially with the PS3 version. The game play is awesome but interacting with other players is still challenging.

How to enter the MapHook Contest!
Speaking of DCUO, our good friends at MapHook have partnered with us again to create a fun contest. We would like you to go to either MapHook.com or download the app to your iphone/ipod and create a Hook with a picture of your DCUO character and a little “back story” about them. And for listeners who aren’t playing the game, you can just tell us what kind of hero or villain they would create if they were playing (adding a picture you drew would make it more fun too). You have until February 19, 2011 to get your entry in and the winner will be chosen at random and win a game of their choosing (up to $60 value)! Please be sure to have the word DCUO in the title so the entry can be found. Below is an example from Nicole and the character she created on the Redemption server, Omni Girl! Good luck and have fun!!

Sky Burger & HeyTell (technically not a game) for Free on the iPhone/iPod

Direct2Drive is having a 15% off top titles because of the Blizzard – Two Worlds, Magika, DCUO, RIFT Digital Collectors Edition preorder. Use promocode “SNOWBLOWS” at checkout.

Gaming News

You can now beta test the 3 mods that Blizzard created specifically to showcase the mod engine in StarCraft 2. The games include Aiur Chef, StarJeweled, and Left 2 Die. They are a blast to play!

Zelda Reorchestrated is a wonderful project that is taking the classic music from a number of the Zelda games and recreating it using an orchestra. Zreo is currently working on creating their latest project Twilight Symphony and is funding the project via KickStarter. It addition to Twilight Princess, Zreo has also recreated the music from Ocarina of Time and the entire set of music can be found here. The guys leading this project say “We do not seek profit or fame. We simply love Zelda and wish to share its inspiration on all of us with all of you.” Feel free to follow the link above if you would like to support their project!

Core hound pet adoption drive! Blizzard is having a year long contest to encourage people to get authenticators on their accounts. Submit a screenshot of your corehound pet to win an iPad! Everyone month for a year they will pick 2 winners but you can only enter once.

Be a Part of the Show!

Give us a call on our voicemail line at 623-252-4263 or email us a mp3!

Also to celebrate the release of Cataclysm we had listener Paul donate 2 of the new pets to 2 lucky listeners! Thanks so much Paul, you are the best! So if you are interested in winning either the Mookin Hatchling Pet or Lil Ragnaros Charity pet, all you have to do is comment on this post and tell us your favorite part of Cataclysm so far. We’ll pick the winner randomly from the comments on January 6th! Good luck and thanks again to Paul for donating the pets!!!!!

MapHook Contest: Speaking of contests congrats to our MapHook Winner: iKrissi for her hook from World of Warcraft. Her prize was any game (up to $60) and a Ladies of Leet t-shirt!

Don’t worry if you didn’t win this time we just announced another contest with MapHook! This time we are picking the best story over the holiday season. You will have until January 5th to create a story with all of your hooks over the holiday season. Just sign up for your free MapHook account and create a hook of your best gaming & holiday moments and make sure the tag LOLGOW somewhere in the description or details (so we can find your story). We will be picking our favorite from all the entries tagged with LOLGOW on January 9th. The winner will get a free game of their choice (up to $60) & a Ladies of Leet T-shirt! Come on and enter! How often is it that easy to win a free game with awesome odds? :)

As mentioned in Episode 23 of LoL we received a great individual review from robodude666 about the new service OnLive. Instead of trying to cram his review into the show I felt it would be nice to create it as a separate post for those interested in the service.

— The Review —

After signing up, OnLive is downloaded as a small ~30MB application which gives you the ability to login, and it’s where virtually everything happens. The interface is a very console-like with 9 rectangular buttons aligned in a grid. They give you the ability to browse games, view other people play, view recently played games, profiles, change your settings, etc. The game list is just a huge list of games, and actually isn’t all that huge. There are about 10-15 titles, though there are a few big titles like Assassin’s Creed II, Mass Effect II, Splinter Cell, Dragon Age, etc. I tested the service using Assassin’s Creed II and Splinter Cell. Mass Effect II wasn’t available on the Mac OS X OnLive client (lame!), though I would have happily tried it as well.

Everyone is probably wondering, how is the visual quality? Horrible. You’re basically playing pixelated pirated/flash-like quality video that has interactive controls. In fact, it seems that the games on OnLive are all special builds as none of them have a Video or Graphics section in the settings. I played Assassin’s Creed I on my gaming PC when it was released with a fairly high-end DirectX 10 card and it looked stunning. Playing Assassin’s Creed II on OnLive was like watching a YouTube video 2 or 3 years ago. The lag made timing jumps very difficult sometimes, and if the lag was too severe OnLive would simply disconnect you without giving you a chance to save.

I tested the service with a pretty decent 15Mbps down, 3Mbps up cable connection and live in NYC. I can stream HD video from hulu, the olympics, and youtube without much problem. OnLive, however often said my connection was not good enough and locked me out of the service until my connection improved. During these occurrences (normally after 5PM), SpeedTest.net said I was getting about 8-10Mbps down. Logging in and Playing at 8AM to 1PM was no problem. So, if you’re on a so-so connection you may find trouble logging in if your ISP’s network is saturated by other clients.

Now, while the service is not all that beautiful, the demo system is very well through out. You can demo virtually any game and get 30-35 minutes of play time — from the start of the ACTUAL game. This is actually quite cool as most PC games don’t ship a demo out, or when they do have a demo released the demo only covers one cool actiony sequence that might have been the only fun part of the game. So, because you don’t have to download gigabytes of demo like you traditionally would this works out very well. You can try a game before buying it (though I recommend buying it outside of OnLive).

Games can be played by purchasing a “Pass” for them. Passes can include a lifetime pass, or a short period aka rental pass. These can range from nearly full retail price to only a few bucks for a few days of access, which is quite cool. Some games aren’t worth owning, but being able to play them for a day or two is great.

The Bottom Line? OnLive needs some more work. A subscription-based model for crappy Flash-like pixelated quality video is not worth it — especially as you have to also BUY the game. In closing, OnLive can be a great GameFly-like service for PC gamers, who can’t afford a console or aren’t comfortable with Analog Controls. It’s just not there yet. If you can get a hold of a 1-year free account OnLive is offering, it’s definitely worth checking out. Even if you don’t fall in love with the service, it’s a good way of demoing games or playing the full game for a day or two instantly. I wouldn’t use it as a primary way of gaming though. Consoles and decent gaming PC hardware is affordable these days, plus the release of Steam for the Mac solves that issue.